In the Cards
by monicawoe
Summary: Fate wasn't hers to change. She was an oracle — there to tell them what the future held in store. Nothing more, nothing less. And people were so desperate to know, even though it changed nothing.


The last card was always her favorite to read.

It wasn't just the anticipation in the eyes of those seeking guidance, it was their desperation. The last card always brought their emotions bubbling to the surface, no matter how collected they tried to keep themselves. She'd seen grown men weep after revealing the meaning of their final card. She'd seen the powerful and wealthy plead with her, kings and queens fall to their knees begging for a change of fate.

But fate wasn't hers to change. She was an oracle — there to tell them what the future held in store. Nothing more, nothing less. And people were so desperate to know, even though it changed nothing.

The man across from her now was old, for a man. Centuries ago, humans wouldn't have lived this long. Circe wasn't entirely sure they were better off now that they'd extended their lifespans through chemistry, metal and plastic.

She placed her fingertip carefully onto the last card.

"That doesn't look like a good card," said the man. His chin quivered, and his voice was nearly inaudible.

"No card is inherently good or bad, Mr. Ward." She let the image on the card — three swords piercing a heart — speak through her and continued "You and your wife were together for a long time, were you not?"

"Fifty-two years." He smiled. "I was so worried we wouldn't make it to our fiftieth when she first got sick."

"But you did." Circe smiled. "You've had a good long life together, and she loves you."

"I know she does, there was never any question of that, I just want to know—"

Circe placed the tips of her fingers on the card and let the ink flow into them. It crept up her hand, circled around her forearm like a multi-colored ribbon and settled by her shoulder. The old man's eyes watched the card tell its story through the canvas of her skin, as Circe saw the images speak into her mind.

The heart and swords reformed, as they'd been on the card, but the heart was made of flesh. It beat slowly but steadily as the swords grew so pale they looked like bone. The sword in the center started to crumble, bone turning to ash and where it pierced the heart, its flesh turned black with necrosis. The heart started to shrivel as the other two swords broke like brittle twigs and fell back into Circe's skin. She breathed deep as the ink flowed back out onto the card and her vision ended.

Mr. Ward's eyes were glassy with tears.

"The doctors extended her life, but not indefinitely. That is beyond their power." She let her smile fade. "They're only human, after all."

"Yes, but—"

"Understand that no matter what you do, the time you have left with Grace is short. You can take her to another doctor, and another. Put her through more procedures and more treatments and give her a few more weeks, or even a few more months, but every time you do that you'll be taking her away from home, away from _you_. Why not spend the rest of the time you have left with her, together?"

A tear ran down the old man's cheek. He opened and closed his mouth once before he was able to speak again. "How— how long?"

"Three weeks." She wrapped her hand around his and squeezed it gently. "Make them count, Jonathan."

He nodded. "I will." He stood up, resting his hands against the back of the chair.

Circe smiled. "Good."

He turned away from her and sniffled, then stopped and faced her again. "My payment…forgive me, I nearly forgot." He walked back to her, wiping at his nose awkwardly and came to a halt by her chair. "I don't have much left."

"I know." She took his hand again. "It can be small. Anything of value."

"Does it matter, from when—"

"Not at all. Sometimes the older ones are much more valuable."

He sighed, sounding relieved. "All right then." He relaxed his hand in hers, and closed his eyes.

She felt his mind open to her as he focused on the memory. He was a boy, the grass was a bright, lush green, and the air smelled like spring. He sat, relishing the warm light of the sun, and then a beautiful, large butterfly landed on his knee. It had white and yellow wings with a border that looked orange — like a flame. The butterfly lifted off his knee, out into the ether, and manifested above their joined hands, hovering for a moment before it settled on Circe's wrist.

"Thank you," she said. "Now go home to your wife, and enjoy the rest of your Saturday."

His chin quivered again, and he turned to push the curtain aside.

After he disappeared down the hall, she waited for the sound of the door opening and closing before relaxing back into her chair. She ran her finger along the image of the butterfly on the inside of her left wrist. It had magnificent wings of yellow and white and looked remarkably lifelike.

* * *

Not all of her visitors had appointments. Some came without announcement — usually those who didn't think they'd actually go to a fortune teller, and just liked to toy with the idea until the very last second.

Her door chimed again about an hour after Mr. Ward had left. Circe forced the white of her eyes back into a warm shade of brown. Something comforting, and human.

The woman who pushed her way through the curtain a moment later was small, and young, late twenties at most. She looked at Circe and immediately flushed, like she was embarrassed to even be there.

"Can I help you?" Circe asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral, though she was sure her amusement was showing through in her expression.

"I think so," the woman said quietly, sitting down across from Circe at the small table.

"What's your name?"

"I thought you were psychic."

"I can tell you about your past, help you understand your now and show you the likely path of your future. That hardly makes me psychic." Circe picked up the deck of cards, and held it, waiting for her new customer to answer the question.

"Amelia. My name's Amelia."

"Pretty name. It means _work of the Lord_, if memory serves. Do you do the Lord's work, Amelia?"

The woman smiled sheepishly. "That's debatable."

"What brings you here?"

"I need answers."

"Don't we all." Circe placed the deck of cards in front of Amelia's small, folded hands. "Think of your question. Hold it in your thoughts as you pick up the cards, and then shuffle them three times."

Amelia did as she was told, shuffled the cards in a sloppy, haphazard way, and put them back on the table.

The cards felt cool when Circe touched them again, and she wondered if she should turn up the heat. Humans got cold so easily — especially the females. She drew the first card and flipped it face-up before laying it in the center of the table. "Your question is about somebody else."

The woman nodded, a strand of her dark hair slipping out from behind her ear to hang in front of her eyes. She pushed it back absently and flicked her eyes up and then back down at the card — the Hanged Man.

The man on the card was taller than usual and his hair hung down low, brushing his bound hands. On his chest was a tattoo — a protective symbol. That was new. "Someone you care about. A man?"

"Yes."

The next card was the Five of Cups — a man in a cloak, standing by a shore, surrounded by overturned cups. Bereavement, but something else too. "This man, he's lost to you now?"

She nodded again, but didn't speak.

"Did he leave, or was he taken?" The five of cups was a young man today, although one with eyes far older than the rest of him. His hair was dusty-brown and the green of his cloak matched his eyes.

"Both, I guess. I mean, I think—" she fiddled with her fingers, nervous. "I think he wanted to leave, but now that he's back with his brother, there's no way he's coming back."

"His brother." Circe tapped the edge of the card, careful not to touch the image itself. "He's lost a lot. They both have."

"We've all had loss. I guess I just thought that maybe…" She shook her head and laughed humorlessly. "I thought that we had each other, and maybe that'd be enough, you know?"

The oracle smiled sympathetically and reached for the third card. Temperance. Not unexpected, but the angelic cup-bearer had never appeared quite so forlorn. She looked at the three cards and came to a decision. "Before we move any further, you need to understand more about these three."

Amelia tilted her head to the side, brows furrowing in confusion, but then nodded hesitantly. "Okay. You know best."

"I do." Circe placed her hand on the three cards and smiled, letting the tips of her sharp canines peek out just a bit. "Remember to keep an open mind." She gave her customer a steady look before closing her eyes and letting her magic take over. She heard a soft gasp from across the table, but no chair legs scraping across the floor or the sound of someone fleeing in terror. The ink tickled as it flowed off the cards and into her skin, and she turned her back towards the table, dropping her shawl so Amelia could see her back.

"That's incredible," she said quietly, awe shading her voice.

"Watch, and see what the cards have to tell you." Safely facing away from Amelia, she opened her eyes and focused them inward, feeling and _seeing_ the images unfold across her skin.

The first card to soak through her skin was Temperance. He appeared under her left shoulder, she could feel him edging out just under her shoulder blade.

Temperance was busy pouring liquids between his two chalices. Pure water flowed from the left cup to the right and back and he never spilled a drop. Behind him, the seasons shifted from blossoming spring, to a cloudless summer.

His white wings ruffled nervously as the cup in his left hand filled and overflowed. Drops started to leak over the edges despite the angel's attempts to transfer the water faster. The angel himself started to bleed — white-blue grace leaking from a small wound in his side.

Summer turned to fall and the trees around him shed their leaves so quickly that the river at his feet turned from blue to burnt orange and brown. The leaves decayed rapidly, becoming black like ash until the water itself has darkened.

As the river changed, so did the content of the angel's cups. He poured the black ichor into the other goblet he held in his right hand. The black mixed with the white-blue of angelic grace the other cup held and the angel shuddered as the two forces collided. The angel's face cracked open — a dark spider-web oozing black. His wings stained red and his white cloak faded to a murky brown as the world around him turned sick and dying, white ash covering the ground as thick as heavy snow. His wings were saturated — dripping blood so steadily that the river itself became more red than black. The angel's wounds bled grace and black and he slowly began to wither away.

The blood spilled across Circe's back, warming her skin. It spread further and further to the right, until it reached the stem of the only one of the five cups left standing. The cup tipped over, and the blood ran inside, and so all five cups looked like they were emptying blood onto the pale sand of the shore.

The green-eyed man walked away from the cups towards the water. His green cloak billowed behind him, revealing dark stains of brown, red and black. There were things following him, crawling their way up out of the sand and reaching for him. Seaweed and bone wrapped itself around his calves and turned into thick claws, until he could walk no further. He stopped and brought his staff crashing down onto the claws until they shattered and broke into dust, scattering back onto the sand. He walked onwards, towards the water, never looking back. The black ooze followed him, turning the sand black in its wake

When he reached the edge, an enormous wave came to meet him, and from it spewed forth a monstrous serpent with an all-consuming hunger. The green-eyed man raised his staff and dove into the jaw of the beast, falling back into the ocean with it. The water bubbled and frothed and filled with black ooze. With the next wave, the man washed back up on the sand — his cloak tattered and stained with black. He crawled along the beach, pulling himself forward with his hands, one slow pained grasp at the sand after another, until he made his way back to his five cups. The blood flowing into and out of the cups had turned sluggish and the red-stained sand was starting to look black under the dim light of the sky.

Undoing his cloak, the man pulled a pin from his collar, and ran it along his wrist until his skin split open. He took the cup closest to him and poured it into his wound, then repeated the process with the next cup, and the next and the next. The last cup was full of black from the ocean, but he poured that in as well, and screamed as he did so. He fell back into the sand, his green eyes wide and unseeing and the black ocean swelled up and swallowed him whole.

The black water streamed ice-cold down Circe's back, until, near the center, it spread wide and thin and became the dark, night sky. The black streamed down, forming a massive tree. Hanging from one of the branches, with his head hanging straight down her spine, was a man. His brown hair was so long it nearly grazed the tall dead grass beneath him. His eyes were closed and his face was peaceful.

The black sky rippled with lightning and fat drops of rain fell blood-red down onto the tree and onto the hanged man's chest. The blood hit the small black tattoo on his left side and the sigil of ink lit up bright white, beginning to shift into something else. The hanged man's eyes flew open and he looked up towards the sky. The rain came down heavier, red drops running down the man's skin faster and faster. One of the drops landed in his open mouth and he moaned. The rain stopped, and the sky lit up with lightning once more then turned a deep dark red, black clouds roiling above the tree.

The next lightning-strike hit the world tree, severing the branch he hung from. He fell from his branch into an inferno, weeping as the fire crawled up his skin. His long hair became a halo of flame and the tree behind him burned until its remaining branches looked like great, fiery wings. His tears turned to blood and he was no longer crying but laughing. His madness drove the coal-black clouds from the sky until they gathered at his feet and seemed to bow. His eyes burned with hellfire and the tattoo on his chest shifted from a protective sigil into something more sinister: the sigil of the fallen angel.

He reached out his right hand and the black clouds lifted up and flowed into his palm, into him. The red sky followed, and the tree, and the five cups, the ocean and what remained of Temperance, until there was nothing left but the hanged man. He wrapped his long fingers into a fist, closed his eyes, and let himself fall back inside Circe's skin.

The oracle moaned softly as the images stopped moving and flowed back inside her skin, their message delivered. She pulled her shawl back up over her back, wrapping it around her shoulders, and turned back to face Amelia.

The woman looked only slightly traumatized, to her credit.

"What did you see?" the oracle asked, looking into the innocent brown eyes steadily.

Amelia stumbled over her words. "I— I'm not sure. It was incredible. Beautiful, but…none of that really happened, did it? I mean — it's all symbolic or something, right?"

"The cards speak differently to everyone. Usually when what they show you is too incredible to believe, they're speaking in metaphor, but these three…" she tapped her finger back on the empty cards, letting the ink flow back onto paper and into the familiar, ordinary symbols of the three cards. "They felt quite literal to me."

"But that's impossible." The woman's eyes looked more frightened. "Sam was — he was on fire, and in Hell, or something, and—"

"Sam. That's the name of your lost love?"

"I didn't say he was my _love_."

"No, but it's very difficult to force a reading on someone's behalf. There has to be a real connection there. Something unbreakable."

She smiled weakly. "I'm not sure he feels that way about me." Her fingers drummed against the table-top nervously and she averted her eyes. "The five of cups looked like his brother." She looked back up, just long enough to ask, "Are there more cards?"

Circe nodded. "Now that we know who we're dealing with, let's look at what's in store for their future." She reached for the fourth card and turned it over slowly, trying to make the moment even more dramatic. She liked to give her customers their money's worth. It was only fair, after all. As it turned out, she didn't have to make the extra effort.

The card was putting on quite the show all on its own, she could tell just by touching the edges. When she turned it over, even the oracle herself was surprised. The Devil card had never looked quite like this.

"The Devil? That's bad, isn't it?" Amelia asked. To her credit, her voice was only a little shaky.

"Normally, no." Circe said, choosing her words carefully. "But this particular manifestation is quite...extraordinary." She looked down at the card and saw Amelia doing the same.

The Devil was standing in a rose garden, wearing a crisp, white suit. And he looked remarkably like the Hanged Man.

"Nice suit," Amelia said, forcing a smile. "What does it mean?"

Circe watched the Devil wink at her as he leaned forward to smell a rose. A chill ran down her spine, and she thought of gods and monsters, of days long past when people had seen her as both. She looked back up at Amelia and answered. "I think Sam's path will be difficult. But he's strong."

"He is," Amelia agreed. After a moment, she added, "Aren't you gonna do that magic trick with your tattoos?" She pointed at the card.

Circe shook her head. "I think that would be a mistake."

Her customer looked disappointed. Then her mouth curved into a smirk. "Don't tell me you're scared? Not you." She looked up, and her eyes were different. The innocence had vanished, and something cruel and ancient had taken its place.

Circe stood up, but Amelia grabbed her by the wrist with a grip made not of flesh, but of sheer _will_. The force pulled her hand forward. "Come on, oracle, the Devil has so much to show you. Not to mention..." She narrowed her eyes. "I haven't even paid you yet."

She strained against Amelia's hold, but couldn't break free. She watched in horror — more than she'd felt in centuries — as her hand was forced down onto the card.

The moment her fingertips touched the card, the Devil became a serpent. He flowed off of the paper and into her skin and she screamed.

"I'm sorry about all this, really, but I need to find him, and he's hidden himself from me. He actually thought I'd just stay in my cage for the rest of eternity."

The serpent slithered up Circe's arm, devouring every image in its path. It swallowed the butterfly on her wrist, the peacock on her shoulder and the skull at the base of her neck. The serpent grew larger and larger, until it was as thick as her neck.

"My brother and I both wanted out. It took some effort, and a hilariously convenient sacrifice, but we got our way." Amelia leaned in close. "It was the first time we've agreed on anything in such a long time. Felt good." She pulled a small, curved blade out of thin air and held it to Circe's face. "My brother went back home. They made such a mess of things while he was gone." She brought the tip of the knife to the outer edge of Circe's right eye. "All I want is my vessel back. All I want is Sam. And to find him, I just need one of your eyes."

The blade pierced the oracle's skin and she screamed as the Devil took her left eye. She forced her right one open, against the pain just long enough to spit at Amelia's face. "I curse you. With my last breath I wish you nothing but pain."

Amelia grabbed her by the chin and wiped her thumb across the blood running down it. "You silly child, I _am_ pain." And with that, she tossed the eyeball up into the air, caught it again, and vanished.


End file.
